Eti Jacobi was born in Israel in 1961. She lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Eti Jacobi’s early paintings demonstrated an unusual sensibility. Innocence, purity, and childishness are present in her works alongside eroticism and ethics, illustrated in a very different manner to previous manifestations of similar themes. Jacobi borrows references from the illustrations of Walt Disney as well as from classical European paintings.

Jacobi opposes the attribution of classical historical painting as “high art”, mature and masculine classical painting versus the “low art” of animated cartoons which focus on the childish. The swift motion, typical of animation, bestows a miraculous quality upon her paintings, in which the flickering of reality turns her pieces into a series of magical moments. Jacobi combines the fairytale mentality and the virtuosity of realization so that the spirit of animation imbues the paintings. She tries to release a fairy-like act, created by little devious picturesque tricks, or in the artist’s words: “My painting is the utmost degree of stuttering fairytales”.

In a later series of paintings, the main body of work featured a figure of a fairy on black canvas. In her most recent paintings, Jacobi used colors disconnected from the painted subject. Light covered the canvas as a rainbow – the purest appearance of all colors.

Eti Jacobi has received the Jacques and Eugénie O’Hana Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Minister of Education, Culture, and Sport Artists Awards for yound artist and creation Art.

Prizes
2009 The Minister of Education, Culture and Sport Artists Award
2001 The Minister of Education, Culture and Sport Artists Award
1992 Jacques and Eugénie O’Hana Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1989 Ministry of Education and Culture Prize for a Young Artist